From House Elves to Hunger Games: Labor Issues in Sci-Fi and Fantasy

Most sci-fi -- at least most good sci-fi -- is a metaphor for something that's happening, or has happened, in the real world: war, inequality, fear of the "other." And yes, every so often, labor issues. Since H.G. Wells nestled commentary on the class structure of Victorian England into the pages of 1895's The Time Machine, science-fiction has offered the perfect template for commentary on current socioeconomic and sociopolitical issues with its focus on "what could happen?" futuristic utopias and dystopias. So, in honor of Labor Day, (which, coincidentally, became a U.S. holiday just a year before Wells published Time Machine) we've decided to take a look back at some of the messages about class and labor in genre movies, books and television from Metropolis to Elysium. Not all of them are resounding successes in terms of execution and/or message, but all of them share a common goal of showing the plight of disenfranchised men and women -- and the labor issues that continue to trouble our real-life society -- through sci-fi eyes. -Angela Watercutter

Above: Elysium

Oh, Elysium. You meant so well. And for the first half of the movie, I was right there with you, ready to embrace your dystopian tale of a world where the class divide was so vast that rich people actually went into space, hovering over the slum-ridden Earth like a silver ring that every poor kid gazing at the sky wanted to grab. And I was totally on board as you introduced me to a working-class man (Matt Damon) struggling to escape the cycle of poverty and stay on the straight and narrow, giving up the excitement and easy money of boosting cars to work at a thankless factory job for a company that prioritized profits over people, treating workers as so disposable that they'd rather send him to die in a radiation murder box to than slow down production of their oppression robots for even moment.

I probably should have stopped expecting nuance the moment I realized that the rich villain literally had the French word for rich (riche!) tattooed on his face, but it seems like there was plenty for District 9 director Neil Blomkamp to dig into about class issues, the way badly-regulated workplaces exploit the poor and feed the cycle of poverty, and of course, access to health care. Aside from its glistening, Risa-like landscapes, one of the key differences about like on the Elysium space station is that everyone has access to nigh-magical medical beds that can heal almost any ailment (including getting your face blown off by a grenade), which rich people refuse to share with the poor people – apparently, because they are just mean. The movie decides to resolve these timely social problems with explosions, dudes in mech suits attacking each other with katanas, more explosions, and finally, (spoiler alert) just giving the medical beds to everyone and then dusting off its hands as though the issues of health care, overpopulation, limited natural resources and immigration have just been solved.

And hey, I enjoy a futuristic assault weapon deploying in slow motion as much as the next person – and there's no reason the movie couldn't deal with real issues while still blowing up a wide variety of things in satisfying ways – but there's something disappointing about making an allegorical film that raises with some of the biggest and most complex socioeconomic issues of our time and then resolves them with the narrative equivalent of the underwear gnome profit plan. As Ursula K. Heise, an English professor who focuses on dystopian literature, recently told WIRED, "The problem clearly wasn’t that people were sick; healthcare’s inaccessibility was a symptom of a radically inequitable economic system. These are treating the symptoms, not curing the disease ... You’re pointing to a big structural, socioeconomic problem, and it’s going to be solved by two white guys in cyborg armor beating each other up? You’ve gotta be kidding." -Laura Hudson

Harry Potter

Labor Issues: Racism, exploitation of the service industry, devaluation of care work (domestics, childcare, etc.), activism

House elves first appeared in the Harry Potter novels in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, where we met Dobby, the elf who worked for the mostly-evil Malfoy family before Harry tricked them into giving him his freedom. House elves exist at the bottom of the food chain in the magical world; essentially domestic slaves to (usually rich) magical families, house elves cook, clean, wear rags and can be beaten without consequence, despite the fact that they actually possess impressive magic powers. Passed down from generation to generation, they are also instinctually compelled to hurt themselves if they dare act against the best interests of their "family" (see: Dobby's self-harm when he attempts to keep Harry from going back to Hogwarts, to protect him) and can only be freed when their masters present them with an article (or articles) of clothing. Despite it being commonly understood in the magical world that house elves' status is "just the way it is" and has been for centuries, Hermione Granger -– a Muggle-born witch and thus heretofore unaware of such a species hierarchy –- is outraged by the mistreatment of house elves, and even more horrified to learn that Hogwarts employs house elves in its kitchens.

Hermione starts the Society for the Protection of Elvish Welfare (S.P.E.W.) and continues promoting fair treatment and ultimately freedom for house elves, even when the elves themselves wish she wouldn't shake up the status quo. It turns out not all elves want freedom like Dobby does; others just want to be treated with respect, as living creatures with identities all their own. The elves who receive respect and fair treatment (as in the Hogwarts kitchen staff) sometimes prefer to keep their jobs without conflict; her attempts to "free" them actually disturb them, despite her best intentions, because she presumes to know what's best for all elves, deciding on their behalf that freedom is the solution to every elf's problems. When Dobby's friend Winky is freed, she becomes unsure of what to do with herself and nearly suicidal with despair at being turned away from her family. Hermione's desire to liberate all elves at all costs, regardless of their circumstances or desires comes across as presumptuous, and a bit of a savior complex on her part that is problematic in its own right.

Author J.K. Rowling explores these politics deftly, especially in an allegorical context intended to be read for children. Discussion of racial and labor politics in the service industry is tricky yet intensely important, especially with kids who might grow up in an environment where domestic labor is employed frequently, possibly abused, and often staffed by people who look different from their families (see: the nanny chain). Using a powerful-yet-oppressed magical people like the house elves to explore those issues, in addition to having a character like Hermione who is staunch in her activist beliefs even while derided by her all-magical classmates, allows kids (and adults!) to draw a clear and powerful parallel between the fantasy they love and the realities they are forced to confront in their everyday lives.—Devon Maloney

Illustration: Mary GrandPré, courtesy Scholastic Press

The Hunger Games

Labor Issues: Non-Union labor, poor working conditions, child labor

In the future dystopia of Panem, all the rich people live in the Capitol and live lives of extravagance. Everyone else lives in the Districts, each of which is has its labor force pretty much entirely dedicated to the production of one thing the Capitol needs. (For example the home of protagonist Katniss Everdeen, District 12, is solely responsible for mining coal.) The people in the Districts are very poorly compensated and barely able to survive, while the fruits of their labor are claimed for the upper classes. Oh, and each year two of their children a "reaped" to compete in fight to the death called the Hunger Games, which is broadcast for the Capital's entertainment and the Districts' horror.

Does it work as an allegory? Simply put, yes. While overall the Hunger Games series is about the dangers of totalitarian government, there are also child labor issues raised by the Games themselves. Not only are they a form of forced child labor amplified to the highest level, they also further exploit those whose families can't work by forcing them to accumulate more and more of the most dangerous debt of all. Both Katniss and Gale, who lost their fathers in a mining accident, take "tesserae" for their families – meaning that in exchange for grain and oil, they puts theirs name into the Hunger Games reaping selection pile more times, putting their lives at greater risk every time. This is one of the many ways the Capitol keeps its District populations in check, along with a forced scarcity of food and supplies and the fact that it can largely control what supplies go where and how much someone gets for what work. This, Katniss notes in the book, serves as "a way to plant hatred between the starving workers … and those who can generally count on supper and thereby ensure we will never trust one another." But, to borrow from French economist Frederic Bastiat, since the goods (and also people) can't cross the borders, armies do – and the unrest of the laborers, inspired by Katniss, reaches a tipping point.

We'll stop there to avoid spoiling too much, but suffice to say the series deals heavily in labor issues. And while it doesn't "solve" all of them, it at least paints a picture of the horror of the abuses imposed by the Capitol and stands firmly on the side of the proletariat. This isn't a new message, but it's a more unusual to see in young adult properties, especially such a massively successful one. —Angela Watercutter

Doctor Who

Labor Issues: Slavery

When science fiction decides to engage with Real-World Issues, it often loses a good deal of the nuance and complexity, reducing them to black-and-white binaries. So go the Ood, a race of aliens introduced in Doctor Who as a metaphor for not only slavery but colonial paternalism. The Ood are not only enslaved but essentially lobotomized to ensure their complacency: Ood Operations, the company that processes them, actually removes the secondary brains that link them to their telepathic hive mind, enslaving and isolating them in one fell swoop. Their servitude is even claimed to be so inherent that if they are not given commands, they will waste away and die.

The Ood are ultimately liberated by the Doctor, who overthrows their captors and restores the Ood hivemind, after which the Ood reacclimate to their native culture and habit with no apparent hardship -- a move that perhaps makes sense within the context fiction logic, but likewise minimizes the lasting impact and damage of their profound exploitation. —Rachel Edidin

Moon

Labor Issues: Human rights, labor outsourcing

SPOILERS. The main character of Moon -- the only character, really -- is Sam Bell, the sole worker at a lunar mining base called "Sarang," gratefully nearing the end of his lengthy, lonely three-year stay on the moon and eager to return home to his wife and child, who he can only communicate with via recorded video messages.

Except that Sam isn't exactly Sam at all -- or, at least, not the only Sam. Over the course of the film, he discovers that he's just one of a horde of clones of the original Sam Bell, commissioned for labor deemed psychologically unsuitable for normal humans and doomed to die over and over in isolation. Following a series of accidents and mishaps, Sam ends up working with another, older version of himself to try and escape Sarang and return to Earth to reveal what's been going on under airtight closed doors out in space.

While the context of the issues the movie raises is strictly science-fiction, the ethical implications of the outsourcing not only of labor but of humanity seem pretty relevant in an age when outsourced labor often overlaps with issues of bodily autonomy. A closing montage establishes that Sam's testimony has led to a massive enquiry, although we never see how it resolves. —Rachel Edidin

In Time

Labor Issues: Um, is it considered fair compensation if you have to work to add minutes to your life?

In the near-future of Andrew Niccol's movie In Time, there is no money -- the currency is time itself. Everyone ages to 25 and then their clocks start ticking down, and to keep them from running out and killing them, they have to work for more minutes. The rich live forever; the poor die young. The workers could try to unionize or fight for better conditions but the conditions themselves sap them and trap them. Since they would probably die before they could say, "AFL-CIO" (give or take), they have to keep working to stay alive.

All that changes for our protagonist Will Salas (Justin Timberlake) when he meets a rich guy (Matt Bomer) who is now 105 but still looks 25, and is so over eternal youth that he gifts a century to the working-class stiff and takes a header off a bridge. When the rich folks start asking questions about why Will is swimming in so many minutes -- surely, he must have stolen them! -- Will takes a hostage (Amanda Seyfried) and goes on the run. They lead something of a working-class revolt and Robin Hood around giving time to those who shouldn't have it (aka poor people) and throw the balance of power out of whack. That's pretty cool, but ultimately, In Time boils down into a simple action flick with a lot of bad puns ("Don't waste my time!" "Somebody's gonna clean that clock!") and doesn't really say much beyond a sad truth that's evident even in the present day: Wealth can buy you a long life, and poverty can be a death sentence. —Angela Watercutter

Metropolis

Labor Issues: Poor working conditions, unfair work hours, conflicts and lack of communication between the working class and employers

The central struggle of Fritz Lang's landmark 1927 film is between rich industrialists and over-worked laborers running the machines that power the glistening metropolis of... Metropolis. Framed as a rich-guy-discovers/empathizes-with-the-workers tale, the movie explores the city's labor struggle through the eyes of a young man named Freder (Gustav Fröhlich), whose father is the master of Metropolis Joh Fredersen (Alfred Abel). He mesmerized by Maria, a black-clad worker who brings a group of poor children to see how the other half live, and then follows her back into the city's bowels. After discovering how miserably the workers there are treated -- they regularly collapse from exhaustion on the job -- he becomes the unifying factor between the proletariat and the ruling class. Or as the film metaphorically puts it, Freder is the "heart" that unites the "head" (his father) and the "hands" (the laborers).

If you can get past the heavy-handed metaphor and wealthy-liberator thing, Metropolis packs a serious punch. Almost 100 years later the film's imagery is still beautiful and affecting as it demonstrates the stark differences between the have and the have-nots. Workers have industrial accidents, industrial overlords fire people at whim, and laborers band together and organize for a better life. For a silent film with nothing but subtitles, it doesn't really mince words when it comes to the realities of unfair labor practices. (This could've been art imitating life, Lang reportedly worked his film crew relentlessly.)

The film comes to a pretty neat-and-tidy end where everyone joins hands for a better tomorrow (sci-fi writer H.G. Wells called it "the silliest"), but considering it was a futuristic flick about workers' rights that came out in 1927 – coincidentally, the same year as the first talkie The Jazz Singer – it can be forgiven for not being An Inconvenient Truth. Even though a lot of the praise for the film focuses on Metropolis' sexy robots and special effects rather than its meaning (its style has been evoked by everyone from C3PO to Janelle Monáe) – those messages are still there. Lang, who was once asked by Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels to head up the German film industry (he declined and fled Germany), said he didn't like Metropolis as much later in his life because he realized "you cannot make a social-conscious picture in which you say the intermediary between the hand and the brain is the heart. I mean, that's a fairy tale." Perhaps. But in this case, it's very possible one person's fairy tale is another person's parable. —Angela Watercutter

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, "Anne" episode (Season 3)

In the premiere episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer's third season, Buffy has run away from Sunnydale, quitting the slayer game in favor of a faceless existence in Los Angeles as a waitress named "Anne," but (because she's still Buffy) gets almost immediately sucked into another sinister plot. It involves a demon named Ken who captures homeless youth (and Buffy, naturally) and forces them to work their entire lives in an alternate universe hell-mine outside the normal flow of time where "100 long years will pass," before dumping them back on the streets old and broken by forced labor only one Earth day later.

Or as Buffy puts it, Ken will "just work us until we're too old and then spit us back out." Guards ask a new captive worker "Who are you?" and beat him when he replies with his name, establishing the line "I am no one" as the correct response. Cue Buffy orchestrating a revolt/escape, while Ken screams "Humans don't fight back! That's not how this works!" After Buffy knocks out all his Putty-esque minions and Buffy's friend Lily pushes Ken off a ledge, they all escape the terror factory. Buffy learns the value of personal identity and decides to return to Sunnydale.

The workers rights plot only kicks in two-thirds of the way through the episode, leaving little time to expand upon the idea. Even then, like most of Buffy's allegories, it pounds the exceedingly simple point home with a sledgehammer without any indication as to what or whom specifically creator Joss Whedon and crew are actually critiquing: American corporations? Globalization in general? Or maybe the Nike international labor exploitation scandal, which was huge news in 1998 when the episode aired? Kinda hard to tell. The general takeaway: be good to the people who work for you. —Devon Maloney